


to wed the land

by Anonymous



Category: Dark Is Rising Sequence - Susan Cooper
Genre: Celtic Mythology & Folklore, M/M, the king grows into his birthright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:41:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: “A libation,” the Queen whispers. Her eyes are hungry. “And a kiss.”
Relationships: Bran Davies/Will Stanton
Comments: 12
Kudos: 70
Collections: Anonymous, Yuletide 2019





	to wed the land

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blue_spruce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blue_spruce/gifts).



> hope you enjoy, and have a very merry yuletide!

Will Stanton is no stranger to loss.

The Old One detaches. The Old One says: _this is inevitable, this is right_. The Old One in him holds the part that is _Will_ , the part that can’t let go, and soothes it like a skittish calf.

It happens too fast for thought. On the bluff overlooking the sea, Will watches them all, sees comprehension drain slowly from their faces; he pinpoints the very moment memory scatters to the wind, sure as the brush of plume-moth wings. Between one second and the next, Bran looks at him and there’s – nothing. Will turns away before he can see everything else between them overwritten.

“Found this in my pocket,” he hears Bran remark, rolling a blue-green stone about his palm. “You want it, Jenny-oh?”

“I think it’s time we were starting out,” Will says, looking one last time to the sunrise, to the fading imprint of the ship against its light. “We’ve got a long way to go.”

*

But he doesn’t expect it to be like this. 

He doesn’t expect the ache of it, bone-deep and gaping, cavernous. The Light and Dark are no more; the Dark banished for all eternity, the Light spirited away over the sea like the remnants of a dream, or a fairytale. All magic dies away.

Will reaches with his mind but the chain has broken with him. There’s no response, and loss beats like a twinned and hollow heartbeat, echoes in his chest with each ragged breath.

And Bran… they’d stood together, once. Yet the wizard without a King is the moon without its planet, a ship without anchor. Will thinks, helplessly, that he really is alone.

Nevertheless, the Old One in him weaves enchantment into the first few letters, to dampen memory and lingering emotion. Childhood friends, and nothing more.

It says: this, too, is needed.

And Will knows. He understands the necessity of it, to cast away all external influence, to neuter those with too much power. Mankind must take fate into its own hands, fight its own wars, and yet. And yet…

*

Years later, when the call arises once again, it’s not a strain of fleeting melody, or a low voice grave in his ear. It’s merely a letter; innocuous, signed with a distinctive bold hand that Will immediately recognizes. He forgets to breathe.

_Will,_

_It has been a long while, and I’m sorry for it._

_But things are not settled here. I can’t really explain what’s going on. And whenever I think of you in particular, it’s as if there’s something vital missing. The firestorm, Cafall’s death… the sea, and a little blue-green stone, that appeared one day out of nowhere. Isn’t it strange?_

_I have a feeling,_ the letter says, _that you should be here._

Will pauses, and begins to pen a reply.

*

To Wales. To Gwynedd, to the mountains.

At the roof of Wales, retracing Arthur’s last steps, before he departed this world for something higher.

And whom does he find but Bran, standing at the foot of the trail next to the standing stone. A tall man, now, somber in black, with hair bleached white in stark contrast, wielding his strangeness like a weapon. As he takes off his sunglasses his tawny eyes blaze, familiar yet alien, and Will is arrested by them, captivated in an entirely new manner. It renders him unbalanced. For all that Will is an Old One, possessing all the wisdom and magic of the ages, he has no idea how to deal with this.

“Hullo, Will,” Bran says easily, as if it had been only days since they’d last spoken face to face, and not years. He opens his hand to reveal a stone, almost like any other, though the shifting ephemerality of its colour is abnormal, neither blue nor green but calling to mind the depths of the sea.

“You can tell me about this, I think.” The easy arrogance is there, though muted; he demands, like a king. He knows, somehow, that Will must obey. 

“I could,” Will says, carefully. He reaches out to take the stone of the Lost Land, weighing it in his palm. Ignores the clamouring of his heart as their fingers touch.

Turquoise, the jeweler’s son in him whispers, smooth and evenly coloured, of outstanding quality.

The Old One in him adds; turquoise for serenity of the mind, for purification and for protection. A strong stone. Turquoise, also, for friendship. Memories, and a furtive hope, and an impossible wish.

His head snaps up; he meets Bran’s eyes with his own hard gaze, disregarding, momentarily, the façade. _And this is how you begin…_

Will’s eyes are drawn, inexplicably, to the corner of his mouth, crooked into a smile.

*

They trek upward along the track in silence, joining the tourists milling in their bright anoraks, incongruous against the rocky formations, from solitary hikers to rowdy families to groups of teens in search of nature, catching the clear mountain runoff in their metal bottles.

Eventually they arrive at the edges of an irregular lake. Clear water the tint of aquamarine laps gently over the rounded pebbles, smoothed out by the eternal wash of the tide; as the water deepens its colour reaches a pure cerulean hue, well earning its epithet. Blue lake, bottomless lake.

“Glaslyn,” Bran says, gesturing. “Into which Bedivere threw Excalibur with an aim that was true and strong, so that it was never found again, and Arthur’s body sailed to Avalon in a little boat, over the horizon there –“ He points to where the sky meets the water, the Llyn Llydaw reservoir beyond shimmering with a dazzling reflected light; the expression on his face falters momentarily, twists into a strange dissatisfaction.

Will thinks, _oh Bran, you know far more than you imagine._ He takes a step towards the lake.

Then comes a sudden pressure, but the feel in the air is – strange, not of the Light or Dark nor the stately remoteness of the High Magic, but a clear sharpness, a sense of exhilaration. It is the biting scent of ozone as lightning lashes through the billowing clouds, it is the smell of earth after rain; it is the scent of honeyed flowers and the secret quiet of the forest.

Bran looks up in a sudden sharp motion, questing for something he can’t quite sense, then stumbles backwards, voice changing to alarm. “Will!”

For the people all about them have disappeared. Not caught out of Time, but out of existence itself, with no trace to be found anywhere, and the depression of the cwm is now in full flowering glory.

Tangled gorse pulls at their heels, the bright yellow blooms mingling with the small rounded blossoms of sorrel. They walk over the new-sprung grass to the edge of the lake, then further in, the water no longer bottomless but rushing merrily about their ankles.

Will dips his fingers below its surface, struck by a sudden giddy joy that wells unbidden, water like liquid light throwing dizzying colours into the air. He turns round to find Bran, and sees him already looking back, with secrets and a dawning realization upon his face.

_Running water resists enchantments…_

Together, they reach the shores of an island that lies in its center, waiting, a mirage made real.

*

The island, when they reach it, is bare, paved with a flat translucent material fitted seamlessly together, upon which their footsteps ring clear like bells. Nothing stirs. It’s almost entirely empty except for a pedestal wrought of gleaming silver, the finest and most delicate work that can be made by hand.

It holds a crystal basin filled with wine; upon its rim is carved, in flowing weathered text:

 _Drink as one.  
_ _Be as one._

“So what are we supposed to do?” Bran asks, brows furrowed. He looks around in perplexity. Will turns inwards, searching for a sign, but nothing speaks to him; his senses as an Old One lie dormant, waiting. It is as the land, too, holds its breath.

He says, slowly, "We follow what it says, I think...

"But we have to do it together." Will cups his hands and plunges them into the basin, bringing them back up filled and brimming; he proffers them to Bran. 

As soon as Bran's lips touch its surface, grass springs through the gaps in the stone beneath their feet. Tree roots push through newly formed cracks, overturning the tightly packed stone sure as an earthquake - 

And the entire world shatters like cracked glass, to reform about them in an instant - the sky disappears under a mass of foliage, and thick oaken trunks surround them both, building into a lofty but impenetrable hall. Shadowy multitudes murmur in its corners, the weight of all those eyes like a physical pressure, and Will thinks, inexorably, of the audience of the Lost Land.

A lovely wire-thin woman greets them at their head, clad in a ruby-red gown, its edges dissolving into sparkling foam. Delicate mauve flowers cap her fingers, bell-shaped, foxgloves for poison that do nothing to disguise the faery’s nails, sharp and tipped with silver; her face is bone-white, her smile razor-edged.

Will moves forward at once, covering Bran’s front; his instincts give no clear answer, whether of danger or of security, but the overwhelming sense here is of Wild Magic, teeming with vibrant, violent energy and the vitality of growing things.

“Queen Medb, of the _gwragedd annwn_ ,” he says coolly, giving an affected little half-bow. “To what do we owe this honour?”

“Stand down, _dewin_ ,” says the faery Queen, narrowing her eyes. “We mean you both no harm, to you and your liege, so long as you do as we ask…

“And how fitting,” she continues, “for your ritual to take place here, in the very place where your esteemed father was laid to rest.”

Bran blinks. “Father?”

She throws back her beautiful head and laughs. “The little prince has no inkling of his true heritage! How amusing.”

Will says, brow furrowed, “But Bran is wholly human, now.”

“And that is where you are wrong, _dewin bach_.” The Queen smiles like a knife’s edge. “This ritual is one completed by mortal kings, too, who knew the worth of joining with the goddess of the land, and thus with the land itself, ensuring its prosperity throughout their reign – much needed, I should expect, in these new and hostile times. Having their sovereignty recognized by divinity.”

She looks upon Bran with a sudden tenderness. "Your mother, too, was a goddess of Britain in her own right... And your father, with her blessing, became the greatest king of all."

Bran says, sudden, shaping the words in his mouth, “ _Banais ríghi.”_

“A libation,” the Queen whispers. Her eyes are hungry. “And a kiss.”

To drink as one, to be as one. 

“In times past you would have to lie with me, Bran _bach_ –“ Bran flinches, blanching, and the Queen laughs yet again, “but I can very well arrange matters otherwise.

“Your paramour is here with us, after all.”

Bran’s eyes flick to Will in surprise as the Queen draws them both together, and then in understanding.

"My _dewin_ ," he says, soft, but with feeling. "I remember, now."

The kiss, when it happens, is sweet, like something long awaited, long fated, and the ritual is complete.


End file.
